How many 'takes' do you average?

[mhs]

For years I've not had the patience or interest when recording for myself (or YouTube) to want to do more than a single take. For the longest time I justified this as something like "more than one take eats up too much time" and " you should be able to get things right in one, and a few mistakes don't matter".

Years ago I used to do LA studio work and had to do a near infinite number of takes of really terrible music that I couldn't tell the difference from the 1rst or 100th take except that the 100th one sounded more tired. I just did it because I was paid by the hour and it was a job and didn't much think about how many takes. Around that time, I did my own recording(s) and averaged about 5-10 takes per track so I wasn't immune nor thinking how I was explaining in the paragraph above this either.

So during a conversation with another recording guitarist the other day who agrees with my 'one recording, one take' stance, I realized that I no longer felt that way. If I'm going to record something, I would really like it to sound as good as it can. I practice guitar quite a lot and don't ever shortchange myself on that, and playing live the same thing (but by nature playing live = one take), so why skimp on the recordings? Even if no one listens to them, I would like to have them be something I'm proud of. In my case, some are good, and some aren't. I know which is which and I've still, due to foolish pride, or my rationalization not bothered to fix any mistakes.

I am going to change my ways and not give short shrift to the recording process which is often the only part anyone hears, and do as many takes as required to get things right. I know this is not always a winning battle but it has worked for me in the past so maybe still will.

So , I know, very long winded.. My question is :

How many takes do you average when you do a recording for mass consumption? Do you have any rationale if the answer is one? I'm totally willing to accept that things are fresher the first time, but they might have enough problems to put some people off.

[williejohnson]

For me, it's usually one, maybe two. I would attribute that to being very prepared going in and being able to "focus" while laying down tracks. If you have your part down pat, one or two passes should be enough. Now, if you find yourself in the situation where either the producer or the artist would like to hear something different than you had in mind, you'll just have to keep going until they are happy.

[Bob Womack]

As a combined recording engineer/producer/guitarist, I'm probably over-aware of the fact that a recording is forever, and that you will spend the rest of your life listening critically whenever you hear it. In me the result is a greater desire to get it right than to get it over with.

With me, the number of takes depends on the situation: solo or ensemble, whether or not it is rehearsed, whether I am improvising, and who is producing (I have the highest standards of anyone I know). On a recent project I was recording electric leads that I had already created and rehearsed. I was asked to self-produce the lead overdubs. On one of the first ones, which was to be triple-tracked in order to be fat, the master take took about three takes to get right. When I overdubbed the triple-tracks, they took only a a take or two each. In the same song I was assigned an extended solo at the song's peak so I pre-wrote it. After the first playback, I knew it was showing in a lack of passion and an over-abundance of precision. In a weird sort of backwards performance curve, I had to dig into myself for the passion and balance that with precision. I finally got what I wanted somewhere around the twentieth take. The result impressed the record's producer and executive producer enough that they promoted the song to the first slot on the CD.

I guess a lot of it has to do with how important individual gestures are within a performance. Sometimes things like left-hand vibrato rate and depth at one little spot can radically effect the emotional impact of a performance and I don't discover than on the first take.

David Gilmour, formerly of Pink Floyd, uses a technique which is interesting: He'll perform the solo several times until he has something like five good takes, each of which has strong point. Then he'll use console automation to compile bits of the takes to one contiguous performance. He's spoken of the challenge of then learning that resultant solo to take out on the road.

Of course, it's a little different when we are talking about a solo acoustic guitar piece.

Bob

[Bob1131]

The reason I record at home is to eliminate the pressure of "time" and money, so I can do as many takes as it requires to get something I am satisfied with. On average, I think it is usually three or four, but there have been times when I've done more than a dozen. Once in a great while I might "punch in" a section, but typically I want to play the song all the way through without mistakes and with the right tone and dynamics.

I have also learned to let it alone for a day or two before deciding if a take is final. I have listened after a day away from it, and realized that it did not sound like I thought it did originally. A few songs have taken a few days to complete because I kept tweaking the performance after listening to the previous recording after resting my ears.

[rick-slo]

Do it as many times as it takes, and that includes not only the performance but getting the sound you like (i.e. mike positions, etc).

The easiest ways are to play it through a few times in a row and use the best take or meld some of the parts together from each take

(this requires a steady tempo throughout however), or on a harder piece of music it may work better to immediately repeat mistakes by

going back a couple of measures and doing it again (this requires maintaining the feel for the musical phrasing and dynamics however).


Warning! You may go back and listen to the recording at a later time and think, "What was I thinking?".

[williejohnson]

These days, it is so much easier to record a good take with the advent of digital recording and "cut and paste", etc. I've been doing this for a very long time and when I first started (using reel to reel technology) if you messed up or didn't like a tiny little part, you had to start all over from the beginning and do it again. Back in the day when recordings went right to vinyl you only got one shot at it. All this is to say that because it's easier to fix mistakes nowdays, I think the art of doing one take is disappearing because it's no longer critical to do so.

[mhs]

Willie: No question: The very prepared thing is a big deal. I sometimes have thought that since I appear to be so prepared via lots of practice for a live gig, that I am prepared for the 'studio' but no such luck. They are different worlds.

Bob W.: Good stuff. I think it all applies. As you said, playing solo acoustic is another matter. I keep trying to think of ways to defray the problems in recording something not so easily punched in or out of without it being so obvious. One thing that has come along is to start by deconstructing the solo piece into smaller hunks that are hopefully easier to play until you get one or two down and recorded, and then you are dealing with a simpler and perhaps punchable piece of playing on the top. Sometimes just laying down a stringbass track is enough to keep me a bit more focused so that I don't follow my jump-into-it tendencies and leave the original far behind.

The Pink Floyd story is interesting because as a jazz player, I just can't think of a solo as something you pre-learn and then take out on the road with you. That sounds like some sort of horrible repetitive torture to me, but that was how I felt about doing other people's recordings too (until I got the check).

The main benefit that comes from breaking a solo into less complex pieces is just that you wind up knowing how to play it all at once much better.

Bob13*: Letting it set for a day or so is a good idea. I used to do that before I got fairly compulsive about it and think I'll head back in that direction.

rick: good suggestions. Yeah, I know that thing about going back, listening and wondering what idiot stole your equipment and laid that lousy track down ;)


Thanks,

[rmyAddison]

As many as it takes for serious recording.

For Youtube, they are on the fly practise sessions, warts and all, but they are my rehersals for live playing, no second chance there.....

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Papol

The Pink Floyd story is interesting because as a jazz player, I just can't think of a solo as something you pre-learn and then take out on the road with you. That sounds like some sort of horrible repetitive torture to me, but that was how I felt about doing other people's recordings too (until I got the check).

One of the things that scared me the worst as I approached a career in music back in the '70s was the thought of having to reproduce my own successful hits for the rest of my life like a jukebox. I solved that by not becoming a full-time musician! But in my work I've done both pre-written stuff and inprov and I'm good as long as I get a chance for both.

The main benefit that comes from breaking a solo into less complex pieces is just that you wind up knowing how to play it all at once much better.

David has been very straightforward in interviews in saying that he isn't the fastest lead player in the world and feels he has to work within the scope of his abilities. Of course, I'd say he's done rather well at that. His melodic solos are quite beautiful. It is just interesting to get inside the mind of someone like that!

Bob

[Jeremy]

As many as it takes for me to get through each track without messing up. Sometimes I can do it once, other times it can be quite many.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by rmyAddison

As many as it takes for serious recording.

Yep. I used to feel bad about how many takes I needed to do, until I got to see what others did, including some very professional players. You do it till you're happy with it.

In the pop world, there are lots of examples of *many* takes. There's an interesting Steely Dan video on you tube where they go thru all the various completely different solos on Peg, with different players. And if I'm remembering this right, I heard some radio DJ say that the released version of the Stone's "Start Me UP" was take #70!

For Youtube, they are on the fly practise sessions, warts and all, but they are my rehersals for live playing, no second chance there.....

yeah, video becomes more of a live, "it is what it is" thing, tho I usually shoot 3 or 4 takes of my videos and pick the one that bothers me the least :-)

[ljguitar]

Hi folks...
I'll do as many as I need, but if I'm hitting a wall after several takes, I'll take a break and get a cup of coffee, or switch to a different song and return to it when my brain thaws out.

I find that the emotion/passion and dynamics tend to level out the more repetitions I feed the machine.

I will not put out sub-standard takes, but I will take time to refresh the brain/mind and fingers.

[wcap]

I'm nowhere near so experienced at all of this as many of you, but it is comforting to see that I am not alone in needing a lot of takes.

This past week I've been working on recording one of my best original pieces that people have been after me to record for a few years now. It took about 7 takes to get an acceptably clean performance. Then I listened to it the next day and though that take had no flaws, it also had no passion! More takes on additional nights (I think I am up to 12 or 14 now) were more consistently free of flaws, and some were better in terms of the nuances and dynamics, but I think I'll still fiddle with this some more.

A large part of the battle for me has been to get over the deer in the headlights feeling one gets when sitting down in front of microphones (this gets particularly bad for me when I get about 2/3 of the way through a take that has been good so far - I get nervous about messing it up!). Several people have been encouraging me to find a local studio to record some of my original stuff, but until I can get over this feeling of paralysis when sitting down in front of a microphone I think it would be a waste of my time and money to go to a studio. This is where my tiny little home studio is valuable.

Interestingly, one of my best takes the other night happened when I started having my mind wander while I was playing - I started thinking about other things rather than the fact that I was recording, I felt relaxed and the music was on autopilot, calling up many of the dynamics and nuances that are programmed into me as a result of playing this piece many times under no-pressure situations in the past.

Recording and performing (things I've been doing more of than ever before in the past year or two) both really raise the bar, in slightly different but complementary ways. In both cases the goal is clean performances with good dynamics, feeling, nuances, etc of course. But when preparing a piece for performance the biggest thing on my mind is training myself to be able to play through anything that might happen without batting an eye - I'm trying to crash-proof myself. When recording (when recording solo at least), I'm mostly obsessing about dynamics, nuances of the timing, tone, having really clean sounding notes, etc - a few little glitches, a few string buzzes, etc will fly past in a live performance with few if any people in the audience even noticing they happened, but in a recording these things will haunt you forever!

All in all, I'm amazed by how much my playing of various pieces has been improved both by preparation for performances and by recording efforts.

[wcap]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

.... or on a harder piece of music it may work better to immediately repeat mistakes by going back a couple of measures and doing it again (this requires maintaining the feel for the musical phrasing and dynamics however).

Given the current limitations of my skills with editing, and given the difficulty I sometimes have in maintaining really precisely identical timing (and tone) from one take to the next, this approach of immediately repeating a section where I messed up seems to be working best for me. I'm finding it much easier to excise the offending bit than to replace them by piecing in bits from other takes.

[Alexrkstr]

I believe most DAWs now have the ability to LOOP Record. I use ProTools LE 8 and it works for me.

Usually take 20 passes or more for the foundation. Usually less for solos and small details.